Plato and the Greek Origins of Nomocracy

Abstract

I argue that in the ideal constitutions of Plato’s Republic and Plato’s Laws, there is a consistent concern with using law to limit the authority of the rulers. While scholars traditionally have viewed the political theory of the Laws as utterly distinct from that of the Republic, I argue that in both we can see Plato using two distinctive legal tools to answer the Juvenal Conundrum, i.e. the question of “who will guard the guardians?” These legal tools are the entrenchment of laws and the rule of law. Entrenched laws are laws that cannot be changed by any procedure, person, or group of people. In the Republic, Plato uses entrenchment of the laws concerning the education of the guardians to ensure that the rulers of his ideal city will be virtuous, and will accordingly rule with the interests of the whole city in mind, while in the Laws, Plato uses entrenchment of the laws to temper democratic self-rule without thereby increasing monarchical rule of other citizens. The rule of law, on recent accounts, requires that rule be exercised, legitimated, and exhausted by law alone, and requires legal recourse and remedy for all citizens of a polity. I argue that the constitutional designs of the Republic and the Laws both turn out to satisfy the rule of law in this way. In the Republic, the guardians rule by law, and have their office and powers delineated by the laws of the city. In addition, the citizens of Kallipolis seem to participate in holding the rulers to account and have some legal recourse in the form of the rulers’ dependence on wages provided by the citizens of the city. The constitution of the Laws embodies the rule of law, I argue, even more than that of Kallipolis. Entrenchment and the rule of law, I argue, are what we can call nomocratic elements of constitution, because they give political authority to laws over and above individuals and groups of individuals. Although Plato was not the first Greek thinker to discuss these nomocratic ideas, Plato is the first philosopher to integrate nomocratic elements in a constitutional theory, and does so consistently throughout his philosophical corpus.